


Distance

by flerovium



Series: Internet Friends AU [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Online Friendship, Teenage Angsting, Unrequited Crush, might write a sequel to this later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5653414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flerovium/pseuds/flerovium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quick little thing I wrote; AU where Iwaizumi and Oikawa are Internet friends who've never met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> I have them referring to each other here with their given names, just because people tend not to use surnames online all that often, at least in my experience, although I don't know how it's usually done in Japan. If what I wrote was culturally inaccurate, please let me know and I'll fix it.

Iwaizumi Hajime did not get crushes.

It wasn’t that he had never met anyone he was interested in, he had, but he usually refused to let himself get to the point of obsessing. The way he saw it, it just wasn’t worth the trouble. He was busy enough with schoolwork and volleyball as it was without worrying about a relationship, and he didn’t find the stress of asking someone out appealing. Besides, it wasn’t as though high school relationships ever went anywhere significant. All Hajime had ever seen them bring to others in the long term was the faint bitterness that lingered whenever the relationship inevitably ended.

So, romance wasn’t really his thing.

He always knew he would get around to it eventually, ideally at a time in his life where it would be a bit more convenient, and a bit less daunting.

However, Iwaizumi Hajime also didn’t usually panic. Sure, he often got frustrated, or even flustered, but he rarely panicked. He couldn’t, as captain of an unruly group of high school volleyball players.

He was breaking all his own rules today.

It started a few months back; he’d been wasting some free time online, when a message popped up in his inbox.

“ _Hi~! I saw you made a post about your volleyball team, and I was wondering, what position do you play?? I’m a setter_ ”

And that was how he met Tooru, a volleyball player originally from Japan, the same prefecture as Iwaizumi even, who had moved away with his family to Australia when he was still in primary school.

He liked talking to Tooru, probably more than he should. He was much more energetic than Iwaizumi, but not in a way that exhausted him as was usually the case, rather his energy seemed to bring out a chattier side of him. They would talk for hours on end sometimes, on weekends they could stay up until sunrise joking around and telling stories to each other.

Tooru seemed too good to be true. And sometimes Iwaizumi feared he was.

Today, though, he figured he could put his mind to rest a little. They’d both finally found the nerve and the time to organize a time and day to video call each other, hence Iwaizumi’s panic.

It was easy enough for him to ignore a crush when all he had to hide it from were the characters of Tooru’s messages on a screen, but he feared it wouldn’t be so easy talking to him face-to-face. What if he stuttered? What if he blushed too much? What if he couldn’t come up with anything to say at all? What if he spoke too fast without thinking and said something stupid?

Iwaizumi Hajime was panicking about a crush and he hated himself for it.

As he saw Tooru’s Skype bubble light up green to show he was online, Iwaizumi briefly wondered if he should have fixed himself up a little, maybe put on something nicer than his volleyball jacket, or done something about his spiky mess of hair. Too late for that, he supposed, as a message notification popped up.

“ _Hiiii Hajime~!! Ready to go?_ ”

“ _We aren’t going anywhere, dumbass._

_But yeah. I’ll call you, so just hang on a sec_.”

Iwaizumi took a deep breath before hitting the call button, silently reminding himself that they were only video chatting, not getting married. No need to be so tense.

He sat nervously chewing on his lip and looking around his room while the connection took its time to load. Early spring daylight was streaming in from his bedroom window, bright enough that he had no real need to turn on his small lamp, but he did anyways. It was mostly clean, the streaks of white light only hitting a couple discarded shirts and a pair of boxers he quickly kicked out of view of the camera, otherwise just illuminating the crisp brown of his floor. His bed was in a bit more disarray, blankets shoved to the side and pillow slightly flattened, untouched since he had woken up that morning. A fresh cup of steaming black coffee, customary of his weekend morning routine, sat next to his laptop on his cluttered desk.

His thoughts were interrupted by a small noise coming from the speaker of his computer. The connection had been established while he wasn’t paying attention.

And there, right in front of his eyes, was Tooru, all fluffy brown hair and white teeth clearly visible through the wide grin spread mindlessly across his face. God, he was gorgeous. He already knew that of course, they had exchanged photos before, but there was something different in seeing Tooru’s face animated and smiling and _real,_ even if it was through a grainy Skype call.

“Hi.” His voice had a cheerful lilt that perfectly matched his texts, a subtle English accent peeking through his Japanese.

“Hey.” Iwaizumi would deny that his own voice cracked a little if anyone ever mentioned it.

Iwaizumi couldn’t help the smile that took over his own features as he took in the sight of his friend live on his screen.

-

They wound up talking for over four hours, conversation flowing easy despite Iwaizumi’s earlier worries. They hadn’t really talked about anything significant, but that didn’t really matter. He was just happy to hear his friend’s voice for the first time.

It was difficult, though. Iwaizumi’s parents were the paranoid type; he just knew they would panic if they found out he was befriending strangers on the Internet, and making a habit of it, too. (Oikawa was not the first, but he was his favourite.) It would only be so long before they insisted on meeting these “acquaintances from school” he was always talking to online.

Because of this, he sometimes wished his parents cared just a little less, so he could have a little more freedom. He hated that he had to wait weeks to be able to talk to Tooru, on a day when both his parents would be out for long enough that they could talk, and timed so that the small, but still noticeable, time difference of two hours wouldn’t get in the way. It was all just so much more complicated than it should have been.

He was just grateful he’d gotten to talk to Tooru at all.

Now, after having hung up the call (Tooru had to go to volleyball practice, even on a Saturday), Iwaizumi sighed, resting his head on the cluttered surface of his desk, math papers sticking to his slightly sweaty palms.

As complicated and frustrating as his friendship with Tooru could be, what with his crush and his all too watchful parents, he surprised himself at how much he really did want to invest himself in it. He blamed Tooru for that. Iwaizumi knew he was insecure, to a point where it became almost self-destructive, and despite the popularity he liked to brag about, he also knew that Tooru had a hard time maintaining friendships. It made him feel responsible for the guy in a sense, and that he needed to show Tooru that he genuinely cared about him, regardless of the nature of his feelings.

What Iwaizumi knew for sure was that he wanted to stay close to Tooru, and if that meant his affections would remain unrequited, then so be it.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so this is the first time in probably about three years that I'm posting my writing online, so go a little easy on me, but I'm all for feedback so I can improve. (Were they OOC? Is the formatting ok? Etc)


End file.
